Mike O’Connell sees a certain seriousness pervading the world. The sort of thing that might put a damper on your day or ruin your weekend. His advice: Laugh at it. Laughing and getting others to laugh has helped Mike O’Connell tremendously, whether it be making a joke when he didn’t know the answer in class or coming to terms with his own mortality.

Mike’s made a lot of people laugh, which has earned him the title of Rolling Stone’s Hot Comic of 2005, a spot as one of Variety’s Ten Comics to Watch in 2007, made his video What’s It Gonna Be one of the most watched on Funnyordie.com, and earned him a production deal with MTV Studios.

That Other Paper What is your earliest memory of seeing or hearing things that make you laugh?

Mike O’Connell My grandfather was a really big humor inspiration. When I was little he was just a silly, silly man. He kind of didn’t live in the adult world. He was always making me feel that it was okay to be funny; that being funny was a beautiful part of life.

Scrambling to rewrite their gun laws after the US Supreme Court affirmed the right of individuals to bear arms (DC v. Heller), the District of Columbia Council voted to end the most restrictive antigun laws in the nation and replace them with new restrictions.

The new legislation, according to an Associated Press report, is designed to follow the letter rather than the spirit of the ruling: Handguns will be permitted but can only be used in the home for self-defense. They cannot fire more than 12 rounds without reloading, which the city of Washington DC oddly defines as “machine guns.” Effective self-defense is further sabotaged by rules requiring that all guns be unloaded, disassembled, or equipped with trigger locks.

Yesterday’s 5.4-magnitude earthquake in Los Angeles was caught on camera during the filming of my favorite syndicated television program: Judge Judy.

For my twenty-fifth birthday, my wife surprised me with a trip to LA to see a live taping of Judge Judy. It was probably the best day of my life – and that includes the day I found a million dollars inside a giant chocolate bar while having sex on the moon.

Poor Michael Bay. The director of such blockbusters as Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and Transformers apparently wrote a script for The Dark Knight that Warner Bros. rejected. There, there, Michael. It’s really for the best. Maybe you should stick to movies with less plot than The Dark Knight.